Punchline

by Jeffrey Howard

The jokes I remember, I cannot deliver well, unlike my sons who prefer the knock-knock variety (“Boo who? Why are you crying, stinky man?”), or my brother-in-law, a learned astronomer, who has dead-panned to me not once but twice: “I thought I was going to be the poorest one in the family, then I heard my sister was marrying an English major.” Punchlines like this land once in their initial utterance, then in combinations upon recall. They linger even when the conscious lies vacant. When next we meet at the Atlantic shore, as is annual custom in my wife’s family, perhaps he will retell it, this time to any listening ear, above the clamor of screaming children fighting over chess pieces or in between bites of fried flounder and seasoned rice. Sliding closed the balcony door, its tall pane mapped with tiny fingerprints of oil and cheese puff dust, I’ll ebb with my plate down to the cooling beach, to lie alone like drying sargassum among the litter of cracked coquinas and sea glass. I don’t need to know how the joke will land. Salt droplets will mist around me, yellow ghost crabs the size of half-clenched hands scuttling to their fragile holes. Sunset glinting in the water as the ocean meets the white pelicans flying in single file, then breaks.

Jeffrey Howard teaches writing and multimodal composition at Converse University and directs the university’s writing center. His poetry and nonfiction have appeared in literary magazines such as Arcturus, Wordgathering, Glint, and The Ekphrastic Review. Jeffrey lives with his wife and four children in Spartanburg, South Carolina.